By the 22nd the sailors were in a state of "mutinous insolence." When the tender's boats approached the ships they were welcomed "with presented arms," and obliged to sheer off in order to obtain "more force," so menacing did the situation appear. Seeing this, and either mistaking or guessing the import of the move, the desperate seamen rushed the cabins, secured all the arms and ammunition they could lay hands on, hoisted out the ship's boats, and in these reached the shore in safety ere the tender's men, by this time out in strength, could prevent or come up with them. The fugitives, to the number of a hundred or more, made off into the country to the accompaniment, we are told, of "smart firing on both sides." With this exchange of shots the curtain falls on the "Fray at Stangate Creek." [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1480--Capt. Berkeley, 30 Dec. 1744, and enclosure.] In the engagement two of the seamen were wounded, but all escaped the snare of the fowler, and in that happy denouement our sympathies are with them. Returning transports paid immediate and heavy tribute to the gangs afloat. Out of a fleet of such vessels arriving at the Nore in 1756 two hundred and thirty men, "a parcel of as fine fellows as were ever pressed," fell to the gangs. Not a man escaped from any of the ships, and the boats were kept busy all next day shifting chests and bedding and putting in ticket men to navigate the depleted vessels to London. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1487--Capt. Boys, 6, 7 and 8 July 1756.] A similar press at the Cove of Cork, on the return of the transports from America in '79, proved equally productive. Hundreds of sailors were secured, to the unspeakable grief of the local crimps, who were then offering long prices in order to recruit Paul Jones, at that time cruising off the Irish coast. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1499--Letters of Capt. Bennett, 1779.] The cartel ship was an object of peculiar solicitude to the sea-going gangsman. In her, after weary months passed in French, Spanish or Dutch prisons, hundreds of able-bodied British seamen returned to their native land in more or less prime condition for His Majesty's Navy. The warmest welcome they received was from the waiting gangsman. Often they got no other. Few cartels had the extraordinary luck of the ship of that description that crept into Rye harbour one night in March 1800, and in bright moonlight landed three hundred lusty sailor-men fresh from French prisons, under the very nose of the battery, the guard at the port head and the _Clinker_ gun-brig. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1449--Capt. Aylmer, 9 March 1800.]